


This Will Only Hurt For A Second

by fideliant



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fideliant/pseuds/fideliant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle of the Five Armies, Bilbo tends to an injured Thorin Oakenshield. The title is a lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Will Only Hurt For A Second

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/3393.html?thread=5423681#t5423681) prompt on The Hobbit Kink Meme, on which I'm spending an awful lot of time nowadays.

When the fires of war started to burn out and the smoke settled enough for anyone to glass the battlefield without having their eyes water from all the ash, Bilbo woke lying on flat ground with a pounding in his head. He sat up with a start and felt the back of his skull where the ache seemed the worst before his surroundings struck him. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed. Bilbo looked around him and was stunned by the sheer volume of death that he could see from where he was. Corpses of goblins and their wargish steeds were piled about the hilly foot of Erebor, and now and then he would see also some dead dwarves and elves and men about with their weapons still in their hands. It heartened and despaired him equally to see that, but he knew at once that the battle had been won.

He got to his feet and rubbed the lump on his head and started walking before realising that he had no idea where to go. There was no one nearby as far as he could observe, but Bilbo thought that he could see tentage erected in the valley where Dale used to be. He decided to make for it when he saw someone else moving about a short distance downhill. Bilbo called out to him as loudly as he could, “Excuse me!”

The figure looked up at him and waved an arm. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“Bilbo Baggins,” he replied, much too tired and worn out to be proclaiming service at that point.

“Baggins? The hobbit?” The figure removed his helmet and wiped his forehead on the back of his arm. He was a severe-faced man with long brown hair and fresh cuts on his cheek. On his back was a yew longbow and a quiver of arrows tipped with goose feathers. “We thought you dead!”

“Ah!” Bilbo felt a small surge of pride at the incredulity in the man’s voice, but at the same time he could not help but feel disappointed by the lack of faith in him. “Well, I am not, so here I am!”

“This is good news,” the man said, coming up to Bilbo. “But there is work to be done. Are you injured at all?”

“No, I do not think so.” Bilbo squeezed his eyes against the throbbing in his head, trying to appear brave in front of the strange bowman.

“Very good.” He clapped a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder. “We must return to camp at once. The battle is over, but we are still not out of the woods yet. You will follow me?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.” Bilbo found himself chasing after the bowman, who ran very quickly, and soon could not keep up very much with his shorter legs. “Sir!” he called after him, wheezing. “Please wait for me, sir!”

The bowman turned around without hesitation and descended upon Bilbo, picking him up as he would a human child and carrying him on his back with his bow and arrows. “I shall carry you,” said he. “This will be much faster.” Normally Bilbo would have objected vehemently against being coddled — he was a fully-grown hobbit, after all — but he was much too tired to argue with his benefactor.

They were in the valley shortly after Bilbo was found and they stopped before a small blue tent. The bowman put Bilbo on his feet and went inside the tent, and later he emerged with Gandalf, who smiled broadly upon laying eyes on Bilbo.

“Bilbo Baggins!” he exclaimed. He had a bandage wrapped tightly around his shoulder and his right arm was in a sling. “You’re alive! Here we were all thinking that you had been lost for good. This is excellent, most excellent indeed.”

“Quite.” He looked about the camp. “Where is Thorin?”

“Ah.” Gandalf’s face turned grim. “He has asked to see you.” He gestured behind him at the tent.

A cold feeling gripped Bilbo. “You will take me to see him?” he asks softly, almost not daring to hear himself speak.

Gandalf pushed back the tent flaps and led him in.

 

 

 

Inside the tent was a small cot and an elf who was mixing something in a small pewter basin. Thorin lay on the cot with a blanket up to his waist, exposing a large cut across his abdomen that was still bleeding slowly. There was a large gash on the side of his face that marred his handsome features. His dented armour had been peeled off him and was piled neatly near the entrance to the tent. Looking closely, Bilbo could see that the bottom of the chestplate was wet with blood.

Thorin himself appeared to be unconscious, for he lay unmoving and his breathing was nearly indiscernible. “What happened?” Bilbo asked miserably.

“He was injured, and gravely,” Gandalf said. “He fell upon the battlefield after being injured many times over, and would have been surely slain had it not been for Beorn.” He looked kindly upon Bilbo. “He will survive.”

The knot that had been tightening quickly in Bilbo’s chest loosened instantly. “I am pleased to hear that,” he said, allowing himself a relieved smile.

At that moment, he heard a loud commotion coming from behind them, and Fili and Kili burst into the tent, both of them battered and bleeding and bandaged nearly from head to toe. Upon seeing Thorin lying injured, both issued simultaneous wails of grief. “Thorin! Oh, we have failed you, our king!” Kili cried.

“Ah, misery, misery!” Fili moaned inconsolably. “That we could not protect you, our own lives are less than forfeit!”

“He is not dead, Fili, Kili,” Gandalf boomed, arresting their attentions such that they turned their tear-stained faces to him. “Nor will he die, but you must leave if he is to be properly attended to.”

“I shall keep vigil day and night,” Fili said immediately, standing as tall as he could with an arrow wound in his thigh. “To protect him.”

“As will I!” Kili stood by his brother, eyes shining valiantly. “We shall not fail Thorin a second time!”

However, Gandalf would not have any of that. “Out, out, out!” He waved them away with his uninjured hand.

“But Gandalf —”

“The king!”

“Come along, lads,” Bofur said; none of them had even noticed that he had entered the tent, but he quickly had seized both dwarves in his meaty arms. “Let the king rest and the good healer do his work.” He winked at Gandalf as the wizard nodded appreciatively at him, and left the tent with Fili and Kili squawking insistently under his arms.

Bilbo reached up and tugged at the sleeve of Gandalf’s robe. “I want to help,” he whispered. “Isn’t there something I can do?”

“Why, I suppose there is.” Gandalf smiled sagely at Bilbo, then spoke with one of the elf healers in a tongue that Bilbo did not understand. The elf beckoned Bilbo to approach the cot and handed him the basin, which was filled with a peculiar-smelling liquid.

“Cleanse his wounds,” the elf instructed Bilbo, handing him a piece of cloth. “Be gentle. It will be very painful for him.”

When Bilbo walked up to Thorin’s bedside, the dwarf shuddered and opened his eyes slightly. “Halfling,” he croaked.

“Thorin,” Bilbo replied, then finally remembering his courtesies, added quickly, “Your Grace.”

“You lived,” said Thorin. “I feared the worst for you.”

Unsure of what to say in reply, Bilbo pressed his lips together and made a throaty sound, averting his gaze. To occupy himself, Bilbo reached into the basin and fished out a piece of cloth soaked through with the liquid. The skin on his hand started to tingle. “I’m going to clean you up a bit, so keep still,” he said as he wrung out the cloth. “It’ll only hurt for a second.” He licked his lips. Bilbo wasn’t so sure about that himself; the liquid was a fizzy green colour and seemed to be hissing at the two of them. He hoped that the elven healers knew what they were doing.

Thorin regarded him with a look that clearly meant that he didn’t believe Bilbo for one second, but he nodded and propped himself up on his elbows as Bilbo gathered his courage and swabbed the cloth along the length of the slash on Thorin’s belly.

 _“Auuugghh!”_  Thorin let out a mighty cry such that Bilbo almost dropped the cloth in fright. One of his bloodstained fists swung through the air, coming within a hair of Bilbo’s nose. He glared at Bilbo. “That hurts!”

“It wouldn’t hurt as much if you stopped moving!” Bilbo said, but Thorin was pressing his fingers along the edges of the cut, inspecting it. “Don’t do that!” Cloth in hand, he batted away Thorin’s fingers, sprinkling more of the liquid over the wound and raising another roar of pain from Thorin.

“Calm down!” Bilbo squeaked. “Calm down!”

But his voice was completely drowned out; Thorin was bellowing a mess of curses and threats, and clearly had no intention whatsoever of remaining calm. “…treacherous elves and their potions! Poisoners! Assassins! Aha! How dare they —”

At that point Thorin stopped saying anything at all as Bilbo, nearly at a complete loss at what to do, bent over Thorin and covered his lips with his own. Thorin tasted like war — salt and dirt and blood and grit, not at all what Bilbo had imagined. Thorin ceased shouting at once, his eyes widening and never leaving Bilbo’s face even after the kiss was over. Bilbo returned to the basin and dumped the cloth inside to steep out the blood, pouting. “And that’s all you’re going to get unless you behave,” he said sternly. “You’re a king now, so best you start acting like one.” Talking to Thorin like that made him feel bold, and with the kiss still on his mind, Bilbo tried his hardest not to blush, wondering what exactly had possessed him at that moment to kiss him.

The dwarf king, however, wasn’t having too much luck with that. He was flushing a ruddy crimson that crept up into his ruddy hair, and he apparently had nothing to say about being scolded like a petulant child. He sagged back onto the cot, looking mollified. Bilbo clucked his tongue and made a second pass over the wound with the cloth. This time, Thorin jerked and squirmed and let out a whimper, but his face tightened in a grimace and he did not let any sound past his lips.

“That’s better,” Bilbo sniffed.

“It hurts,” Thorin complained, although his voice was lacking its usual authoritativeness.

“Of course it’s going to hurt if you don’t stay still.” Bilbo sighed and shook his head as he cleaned the cut a third time. “I’m trying to be gentle.” There was hardly any bleeding left after the fourth wipe; whatever the elves were using, Bilbo made a note to ask them how to make it. He unspooled a bandage and applied a dressing to the slash, then wrapped the bandage around Thorin’s stomach several times over.

“Now your face,” Bilbo said. Scowling, Thorin slowly turned to his side and allowed Bilbo to push his long hair away from the wound. The sight of congealing blood crusting Thorin’s cheek made Bilbo’s stomach turn, but he blinked and steeled himself and continued on. As he cleared away the gore, he could see more of the gash, a sprawling tear in Thorin’s scalp, which did not help with the queasy feeling in his belly.

“That’s…that’s,” Bilbo stammered, then swallowed and busied himself with treating a fresh piece of cloth.

“Bad,” Thorin completed for him moodily. There would surely be a scar, Bilbo knew, but he also knew the stories that people would tell about the King under the Mountain and his battle scars. “On the battlefield,” Thorin said tersely, sucking in a breath as Bilbo touched the cloth to his face. “Out there, I thought about what I said to you at the Gate. If I had fallen, or you…it would not have been right, that our final conversation should have ended as such.” He looked down at the clean bandage wrapped around his midsection. “I would take back everything I said and did.”

“I, well. Um.” Bilbo chanced a sideways glance at Thorin. “I just wanted to help,” he murmured.

“You managed to steal the Arkenstone. You were a good burglar, after all.”

Bilbo felt his face burn. He did not like being mocked at all. “That is very unkind of you to say so,” he said crossly. “But I thank you anyways.”

Thorin’s expression changed from neutrality to confusion, and then settled on one of concern. “I meant no offence. I only meant —”

“It’s fine.” He peered at the gash; the potion was working quickly, staunching the flow of blood from around the edges of the wound. Bilbo applied another dressing quickly and bound that up too. Thorin raised a hand to touch the bandage at the crown of his head, but Bilbo swatted at him. “I told you not to do that.”

“It feels…peculiar.”

“It’s healing,” Bilbo told him, tossing the bloodied cloth back into the basin and sitting himself on the edge of Thorin’s cot, which was thankfully not too high off the ground.

“Peculiarly.”

“Ah! I have never known any wound to heal otherwise.” He fumbled with Thorin’s undershirt, helping him to button it up slowly.

“About that,” Thorin said. “Just now, what you did —”

“Yes. Hm.” Finished with the top button, Bilbo sat back, expectant.

Thorin twisted the tip of his beard absently, his eyes flicking to Bilbo. “Thank you,” he said, and then, almost grudgingly, “I behaved, didn’t I?”

“Well, yes, I suppose you did,” Bilbo laughed, and then leaned closer to kiss him again.


End file.
